feedback

by haywardhelen

Of course I want feedback on the manuscript that I’ve been writing on and off for fifteen years. Of course I want to hear my new editor’s thoughts about it. Up until, that is, she drops the qualifier ‘but’ into a sentence. At which point I wanted her feedback to stop.

The baby whom my new editor promised would be asleep during our phone call mews. We are not alone. Just as my mind was half on my baby whenever I chatted on the phone all those years ago, so is my new editor’s today. She laughs. ‘I really meant for her to be asleep’, she apologises. ‘Really don’t worry about it’, I say. ‘I remember it well’, I add, aware that the mere passage of time relegate me to the position of the older mother.

‘You know’, my new editor says, ‘all the time I was reading your manuscript I was wondering whether you had resolved the struggle you write about, when your children were young, between wanting to be there for them and wanting to succeed in the world’. ‘No’, I reply. ‘I still feel it. I still live that conflict. Perhaps’, I say, thinking aloud, ‘I always will’. ‘Oh’, she says, whether disappointed or not I can’t tell.

Our conversation to and fro’s. The editor mentions that she will be returning to work full-time in January, with two children under four. ‘The sensible choice that I didn’t make’, I think to myself, wondering if reading my manuscript helped to cement her decision. I mention my fear that readers may find my ideas dated. ‘No’, the editor says. ‘The manuscript reads freshly to me. I often found myself making comparisons with my own experience as a mother’. ‘That’s good’, I say, relieved.

‘Another thing sprang to mind while I was reading your manuscript’, the editor says. ‘I’ve only read it through once. But when I was reading it I found myself wondering whether you and your husband were still together. The way you write made me feel you might not be’. There is a pause. ‘Really?’ I reply. ‘Well actually we are, although I do see how you might think that. It might be because I tend to write about the parts of my life that I find tricky and that I need to understand through writing about them.’ Another pause. ‘Although if I’m honest I can also see that being close to my children has lead to less intimacy in my marriage. I guess some readers will judge me for this – I’m not looking forward to that bit. But I wanted to be true to my experience, in writing about it, and this has been my experience. On the other hand I’m married to someone who has allowed me to write about our marriage, which counts for something. Besides’, I add, ‘the last chapter makes it clear where my heart lies’. ‘Yes’, she replies, and we move on.

The first time my new editor uses the rewrite word I don’t pick up on it. But the second time she drops it in I can hear nothing else. ‘Is she serious? But I’ve done with this manuscript’, I think to myself. ‘Finished!’ Keen as I am to publish the manuscript that has been in and out of a drawer since my children were born, I don’t actually want to rewrite it. ‘Isn’t that your job?’ I feel tempted to ask my new editor. Except that I know I can’t ask this. I know that making my work publishable is as much my job as hers. And that for this to happen my new editor and I will be working on it together in the months ahead.

I brace myself to ask a last question. ‘Do you’, I hesitate, feeling a game of snakes and ladders in my stomach, ‘want me to rewrite the whole manuscript?’ ‘Yes and no,’ the editor replies with a laugh. ‘It’s more tightening that it needs. I think that if we think about it in terms of chapters, with each chapter a solid thing, and using your synopsis as a frame, that this next stage won’t be too overwhelming.’

Gulping yet wanting to stay upbeat I change the subject. ‘Do you think’, I ask, ‘that you will want to market the book as a memoir or self-help?’ ‘For me it’s a memoir’, she replies. ‘It’s about your struggle to come to grips with something that – while you don’t resolve it – the process of figuring it out in words allows you to grow from.’ ‘Sure, that sounds right’, I say, struck by the weirdness of my experience of motherhood being summed up in a sentence.

‘So does that mean the book will end up in the Biography section of the bookshop?’ ‘Well’, the editor replies, ‘when I ran a bookshop we had lots of books that didn’t fit into a particular section. For these books I created a section called ‘Madness’. I reckon yours would fit into that’. This time we both laugh. At which point her baby cries loud enough for us both to know that our phone call is at an end – and that once I receive her notes it will be up to me to respond to her feedback. To rewrite parts of A Slow Childhood that I’d thought, until twenty minutes ago, I’d left far behind.

21 Comments to “feedback”

Hi Helen I really enjoy your posts and look forward to reading your book. I am currently rewriting the journal I have written in sporadically for my younger daughter, as it got rain damaged. It’s interesting to see how I viewed things and difficult to resist the temptation to edit what I wrote with the benefit of hindsight. I am sure you will gain some insight from any rewriting you have to do. Are you working on something new that you would prefer to direct your energy into? Best wishes from WA

Hi Yolande, good for you being true to your original journal. And yes, inevitably I have upped sticks and moved on from this memoir. Though obviously I can redirect some of my current energy on to it again…Thank you for your thoughts, Helen

I’ve been reading your blog for over a year and always enjoy your writing. I’m typing this while patting the bottom of a non sleeping baby who is draped over shoulder and I’m listening to far too many other children in the other room making a mockery of my attempt at a clean and tidy home. Just before this I was attempting to make something wonderful for dinner instead of just serving food that pays more homage to tins and a toaster than I would like. My professional aspirations and home life have always clashed and never complemented. I would love a house that was organised and had a sense of style; but I’m a clutterer and a piler up of things. I’d love to be a better housewife but I accept I’m not sufficiently committed to the cause and would rather run away to work. Your writings do resonate with me, as I’m sure they do with many others. It seemed your editor’s comments said more about her than perhaps about your writing. Maybe it’s time for a new editor.

Lucky baby to be draped over your shoulder. What a way he or she has to go. Actually I think she is a very good editor, it’s just the paradox of feedback – do we really want to know what others think of our work? I’ve been on the editor’s end, so I do know what a fine line it is. I think it says more about my desire for an immaculate birth for my ms!

This is so insightful. I have ‘fantasies’ of become a published writer – writing in memoir or essay genre. This is a wake up call of how the publishing world works and what you consider as ‘finished’ isn’t quite.
The subject of your blog resonates with me deeply too, this pull of being a good mother/wife/housewife (more like housekeeper) and how those things conflict with me and what I want for myself in my prime years and the resentment it causes when my goals recede into the background. Thank you for your insight as always.

I am thinking a lot about resentment at the moment – even managed to have a non-reactive conversation with my husband about it over dinner last night. So I was interested to see it appear in your musings. You will laugh, but my current solution is to put on my apron for an hour and think to myself ‘this is my housekeeping hour’. Framing it in this way – with an apron and an hour – makes it doable and non-resentment making. I’ll tell you if it works – though I don’t think responding to wordpress comments counts as housekeeping!

Two terrifying words, ‘but’ and ‘rewrite’! I’m quite intimidated by attempting to write, yet love it so much and the push/pull of asking for feedback takes a certain amount of nerve. I want to be a better writer and need that feedback to improve, but hate the idea of having to work even more on something that I’ve spent quite a chunk of time on! It was fascinating to read your post, realizing you have experience as both writer and editor. It sounds like you have a quite a compassionate editor here to work with!

I don’t think the editor/writer can be an easy relationship – when it works it is because it brings together two different ways of seeing a text. Both this editor and I are going to have to bend and somehow meet in the middle. Currently I am having a negative therapeutic reaction to my text. I hate it! But this will pass, like so much else. Hopefully with the editor’s help it will become commercially readable and not too quickly remaindered! Helen

That’s really interesting, bringing together two different ways of seeing a text. I read somewhere that a writers wish was to have an editor they could grow old with! It does seem to be a complex relationship……

I just read your text HOMEWORK in Vela, and have to thank you: it is a wonderful text!

As the mother of a grown-up-child with Asperger’s I still, after 25 years of motherhood, find it difficult to admit that I really don’t have that much time for work … I was working on a PhD in education when I decided enough was enough, that I didn’t want to go on pursuing a career in academia. Today I am a writer and a critic, but I work for pleasure, not for money. I suspect that if I were to keep an ordinary day-job, my daughter would have had an even more stressful life, and I’m sure I would.

Even so I find it hard (shameful???) to tell people that I actually spend a lot of my time being a mother, doing homework. Stupid? YES! but there seems to be something cultural kicking in which is very difficult to overcome.

We can all read Brene Brown, and nod in agreement that shame is the wrong to feel when it is the result of an inner sense of duty, and yet it lingers on. Your life sounds very worthwhile, and I’m not at all trying to reassure. How else would your daughter have had a half way decent life? Overcoming your mixed feelings is a kind of work, and is often the stuff of art. And work is work, money or not. Helen